Re: Any interest in a documenting of my summer breeding related project
Posted: 28 Nov 2019, 04:43
I must apologize for having stopped posting in this thread, but two days after the above post I had a heart attack and 5 days later I had bypass surgery. I am just now getting back close to normal. I do have a few observations about what went on in my tanks over the past 11 weeks or so.
The first two issues I worried about were feeding and water changes. My brother was able to feed but I had him using flakes and kensfish.com mini sinking sticks. I was able to give him numbers on the sticks and a decent description on flake amounts. Only tanks with fry got fed daily, the rest got fed every 3 days to minimize the work. A couple of nice folks in my fish club, one a friend and the other almost a stranger, came and helped out a couple of times each. So the tanks got water changes and filter rinsing every 3 weeks and the fish in the terrace tabks got brought inside. I am now doing the maint. work, but it takes more time than usual.
Now for the interesting part. I figured that the reduced maint. and the use of lower quality food fed less often would have a negative impact on spawning and the survival of the very young fry in tanks. I was half wrong. Even as I was losing the smallest fry, my breeders were still spawning. For the first week+ home I did nothing tank/fishwise save feed the same fway as I had my brother doing. That was when I discovered new fry in the TR 173 tank and both L236 tanks. About three weeks ago I spotted new fry in the WC 173 tank and over the weekend the alpha male released his most recent brood from his cave. I cannot say if there have been spawns in some of other tanks. I was not allowed to bend over for a few weeks which made it impossible to do a real inspection of any of my six under tanks which are for breeding or growing out plecos.
I am just about back to where I can start breaking down and putting tanks back together to determine what I still have. When I went into the hospital I had almost 200 assorted pleco fry with a number being one month or less free swimming.
The first two issues I worried about were feeding and water changes. My brother was able to feed but I had him using flakes and kensfish.com mini sinking sticks. I was able to give him numbers on the sticks and a decent description on flake amounts. Only tanks with fry got fed daily, the rest got fed every 3 days to minimize the work. A couple of nice folks in my fish club, one a friend and the other almost a stranger, came and helped out a couple of times each. So the tanks got water changes and filter rinsing every 3 weeks and the fish in the terrace tabks got brought inside. I am now doing the maint. work, but it takes more time than usual.
Now for the interesting part. I figured that the reduced maint. and the use of lower quality food fed less often would have a negative impact on spawning and the survival of the very young fry in tanks. I was half wrong. Even as I was losing the smallest fry, my breeders were still spawning. For the first week+ home I did nothing tank/fishwise save feed the same fway as I had my brother doing. That was when I discovered new fry in the TR 173 tank and both L236 tanks. About three weeks ago I spotted new fry in the WC 173 tank and over the weekend the alpha male released his most recent brood from his cave. I cannot say if there have been spawns in some of other tanks. I was not allowed to bend over for a few weeks which made it impossible to do a real inspection of any of my six under tanks which are for breeding or growing out plecos.
I am just about back to where I can start breaking down and putting tanks back together to determine what I still have. When I went into the hospital I had almost 200 assorted pleco fry with a number being one month or less free swimming.